I saw most of Steve Ballmer’s Windows 7 keynote at Mobile World Congress this morning. Most of the phone’s features were demonstrated and there are some cool ones. Mostly the phone looks different than other things in the market, even as it borrows certain elements from Apple and Google.

However, one of Microsoft’s core mobile competencies — voice and voice search — was not on display in the demo. I would have expected deeper integration of Tellme’s technology into 7 and that this would be one of the differentiators or would-be differentiators for the company. Yet it was nowhere in evidence. 

I’m sure that voice search will be available for Bing; but will it be available at a deeper level in the way Google is trying to integrate voice on the Nexus One? That wasn’t the case today and it’s not clear how and whether Microsoft will use voice as the devices roll out late this year. If the company is smart it will seek to voice-enable as much as possible on the device.

Here’s a quick demo of local search from MobileCrunch on the scene in Barcelona: 

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Tags: Microsoft, voice search